Which material for shelving?

[Bill Wright]

Use tongue and groove floorboards. Put a decorative edge about 2" high along the front edge to add rigidity. Put one along the back as well if you like. Sand and stain, or paint.

Bill

[dennis]

Cut the tops of these up, they are remarkably stiff for their weight.

You can see how stiff they are at

[dennis]

Why? They fit rubber feet to make them flexible.

[Bert Coules]

Are those tops solid? The price is remarkable.

Bert

[Capitol]

Bit of a sidetrack, but I wasted a lot of time searching for a walnut hifi cabinet which would take 19 inch units. I finally compromised and made a wheeled wooden platform and stacked them vertically. I don't know where people find the space for the ultra wide cabinets/stands that are the current fashion.

[tabbypurr]

anything less is prone to vibrate.

Preventing feedback is done by a series of hard heavy & soft damping materials. Heavy platter, stiff metal deck on soft springs on a heavy very firm wooden case slightly squashy rubber feet very hard shelf

Anything less might or might not work, but often is far from ideal. I managed to get an old Pioneer PL12D working well by sitting it on stone - it had no deck to cabinet squishy layer. The paving slab mentioned is another effective way to stop vibration.

NT

[John Rumm]

Google "lack rack" for plenty of examples of use as equipment mounts.

[RJH]

Or these:

The form of mounting isn't the last word in strength, though - I'd say

15kg is optimistic.

[Bert Coules]

Many thanks to everyone for the new replies - too many to respond to individually, so please forgive this general note.

I'm going to go with 18mm ply: I can get more than enough shelves out of a single 8x4 sheet. And I'll probably put a cosmetic strip along the only visible edge (though I have seen varnished ply edges which didn't look unattractive).

That Lack table is a nice find, so thanks for that.

I have those concealed fitting shelves elsewhere in the house, but I wouldn't put anything of any great weight on one. They can't be used for this present job anyway, because I'll only have fixings available at the ends.

I'm grateful for all the responses and ideas.

Bert

[dennis]

No, they are like doors with a honeycomb core. Very stiff for their weight. The whole table is about 2-3 kg. They happen to be just about the right width for the shelves @550mm.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

What sort of feedback are you trying to stop? Acoustic feedback from the speakers also requires a decent cover to the turntable.

[Bert Coules]

Thanks very much. They're definitely worth a look, for future use.

[Adrian Caspersz]

IME The legs are made of cheese. Drive bolts through for mounting, say

19" rack things, but tapping screws in it? - er, nope.

[Adrian Caspersz]

Opps, that comment was aimed at the LACK tables.

[dennis]

All the lack rack mods appear to use the unit underneath to provide support. I doubt if you could just mount much halfway up like in a proper rack.

[Andrew]

You'd be amazed how strong a shelf can be made out of a piece of cheapo sapele flush panel door. The type that could be bought for about a tenner, or free from most skips where a refurb is being done.

Cut to length and width and then use a planer to get a bit of nominally 2X2 down to the thickness of the egg box core.

Carefully push back the eggy box material, breaking the glue, sand down the exposed glue ridges and glue in the new bits of planed edge timber.

Then you only need to pin or glue some bits of sepele strip to the exposed edges to match the top and bottom surfaces.

Or use bits of kitchen work top for a really strong shelf.

Or a piece of scaffolding board.

[Bert Coules]

Coincidentally my garden is currently home to a good number of scaffolding boards, and indeed scaffolding, awaiting removal. The idea did occur to me, but I suspect that the scaffolding company have a pretty accurate record of just what they're expecting to collect.

That's interesting about the doors though; thanks.

[Bert Coules]

Plus, according to the YouTube video I checked, the legs are just marginally too closely spaced for standard 19" wide equipment to be slid in and out.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Scaffold board is going to look rather heavy for such a short span. To look decent, needs to be an inch or so thick maximum.

[Bert Coules]

True enough, though appearance is a secondary consideration in this particular instance. But I think it's going to be 18mm ply. Or possibly MDF with the edges sealed.

Bert